


Répondez S'il Vous Plaît

by Mookie



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: M/M, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, You're Welcome, once upon a time there was this LJ comm called fic on demand, yes I will continue posting all my old LJ fics here on AO3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:22:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26702128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mookie/pseuds/Mookie
Summary: Duo chewed on the end of his pen. This was a lot harder than he’d thought. It seemed easy enough when he’d been reading them, but then he’d laughed at most of them.He didn’t want someone to laugh at it.Written once upon a time in response to a Livejournal request for a Heero/Duo fic based on Rupert Holmes' Escape (the Piña Colada song).
Relationships: Duo Maxwell/Heero Yuy
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Répondez S'il Vous Plaît

**Author's Note:**

> Original fic request can be found [here](https://fic-on-demand.livejournal.com/114984.html).

“You know what the problem is?” Duo asked. His toe teased her lower back and she lifted her head to glare at him. He chuckled and turned his attention back to the newspaper. “The problem is,” he continued, as if she cared, “it’s not enough anymore.” He shook out the paper. “It’s just not.”  
  
A slight snore drew his attention and he looked over at her. Her eyes were barely visible through the curtain of honey gold and he laid his hand on her head, running his finger along the edge of her ear. She was a good companion, but he was coming to realize that he just needed more in his life. She did help stave off the loneliness when it got too much, and for that he was eternally grateful. He’d been reluctant at first – scared, even – but the rewards had been worth the effort.  
  
Now, though…  
  
The war had been over for years. When he’d hit twenty, the joy of being alive, of his comrades surviving alongside him, hadn’t yet faded. Now that thirty was looming ahead of him, he thought it was time to stop worrying about getting close to someone.  
  
Ginger opened one eye and looked at him expectantly, and he laughed. Duo turned to the last page and read the comic strips aloud to her. When she closed her eye and gave a little sigh, he stopped.  
  
The comic she’d fallen asleep during was one featuring a couple of single women lamenting the lack of available men to date. The speech bubble over the head of a woman with curly yellow hair stated, “Why is it that the good ones are either taken or gay?”  
  
Duo glanced over at Ginger again. It was just a coincidence, of course.  
  
He turned to the personal ads.

* * *

  
  
Duo chewed on the end of his pen. This was a lot harder than he’d thought. It seemed easy enough when he’d been reading them, but then he’d laughed at most of them.  
  
He didn’t want someone to laugh at it.  
  
A frown pulled at his lips and he rubbed the back of his neck tiredly. When Ginger came up and put her head in his lap, he ruffled her fur and bent over to press the side of his head against hers.

“Good girl,” he said. She poked her wet nose against his palm before trotting off toward the kitchen. He listened for the click-click-click against the kitchen tile and turned his attention back to the page in front of him, filled with lines of text, every one of them crossed out.  
  
He picked up the paper again. Maybe what he needed was to see which ones he found silly and pretentious and which ones seemed sincere.  
  
That’s when he saw it. It hadn’t been there yesterday. The ad contained just the right amount of romanticism for the man-seeking-man section without making the writer sound like he was trying too hard. The RSVP at the end was what made up his mind.  
  
Instead of writing his own personal, Duo jotted down the post office box number and composed a reply message.

* * *

  
  
Heero looked at his watch and frowned. It wasn’t like Duo to be late. He leaned against the brick exterior of the restaurant and crossed his arms over his chest. There was no question that he’d wait.  
  
When Duo came toward him at a half-jog, he pushed away from the wall and waited, making sure Duo knew he saw him and could slow his pace.  
  
“I’m really sorry, Heero.”

The look of chagrin on Duo’s face had Heero placing a hand on Duo’s shoulder.  
  
“It’s fine.”  
  
Duo took a few breaths to recover from his almost sprint. He’d felt guilty as hell when he’d gotten stuck in the long queue at the post office, plagued by the lines of an old proverb about how new friends should be cherished and old ones were like gold. He looked at Heero and nodded slowly. Despite his eagerness to move ahead with his life, he had no intentions of pushing aside his old acquaintances.  
  
Duo held the door open for Heero, and as the other man walked by, Duo recognized the faint scent.  
  
It had come as a surprise when they’d run into each other at the laundromat. There had been no mistaking Heero’s identity – the way he carried himself, the way the muscles in his arm rippled as he lifted clothes out of the washer to move them to the dryer. Heero had certainly not let time let him go to fat – not that Duo expected him to, but then he’d hardly expected to see Heero outside of the occasional meeting that they were sometimes called in on for their “expert opinion.”  
  
There was something quite distinctive about the fragrance of powdered detergent provided by the laundromat.  
  
Duo followed Heero and they took their place in line. Heero picked up two trays and handed one to Duo.  
  
After they’d chosen their lunch from the buffet and taken a seat at a booth in the corner, Duo took a good look at Heero.  
  
“Do I have something on my face?” Heero asked dryly.  
  
“No,” Duo said. “I’m sorry. I was just distracted, that’s all.” He lowered his gaze to the plate in front of him, slightly embarrassed. He speared a piece of cauliflower with his fork and shoved it in his mouth.  
  
Heero was silent for two full minutes, and then his fork entered Duo’s line of sight and pierced a small wedge of onion. When Duo looked up, Heero waved it slightly.  
  
“You still don’t like them.”  
  
Duo shook his head, his eyes fixed on the vegetable. “No,” he said. “I don’t.” He was surprised that Heero remembered – he’d only mentioned it once, when they were on a shuttle together, and he’d confessed it like a guilty secret. It had been hard to fathom, being in a position where he could and did have preferences over food he’d rather not eat, and Heero hadn’t even acknowledged that he’d heard.  
  
When Heero popped it into his mouth and chewed, Duo smirked. “I guess that means no good-bye kiss.”  
  
Heero continued to chew, only more slowly, and Duo’s smile faded but he couldn’t look away. To do so would only make the situation more awkward. And how the hell many times could Heero chew on a single, _tiny_ , piece of onion?  
  
A small tin box was placed on the table between them and Duo laughed. Leave it to Heero to make light of it in his own way.  
  
And at the end of the meal, Duo took one of the mints before offering them to Heero. On his way home, Duo couldn’t get the image of Heero sucking on the mint out of his head.

* * *

  
  
Duo unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it onto the bed with the others. He’d changed three times and was becoming impatient with himself for making a production out of what he was going to wear. Finally he chose a dark Henley. It wasn’t like he was going out to a four star restaurant with a dress code, and the last thing he wanted was to look out of place.  
  
No, he wanted to blend in, wanted to seem like just one of the crowd to all but one person.  
  
He picked up his baseball cap on his way out the door.  
  
When he reached O’Malleys, he looked up at the sign and then around at the loiterers outside. There were several young men complaining about women in general and down the block a bit further stood an equally young couple, both of them arguing loudly as if volume would get their point across better.  
  
Duo pushed open the door and walked in.  
  
He couldn’t resist the urge to look around, to try to locate the person he was meeting, but the view of the corner table he’d been instructed to go to was blocked by too many people. Duo went straight for the bar, to order a beer – from the bottle, he’d been told, not on tap – and turned it so that the label was facing out when he picked it up.  
  
Squaring his shoulders, he pushed his way through the crowd.  
  
When the table was finally in view, he almost dropped the bottle.  
  
“Heero?”  
  
Heero stood up. “Respondent LXQ453?”  
  
It didn’t matter what Duo’s assigned number had been – that Heero was asking was proof enough that there was no mistake. Heero put his hand under Duo’s elbow and brought his mouth to Duo’s ear. “Walk with me.”  
  
Heero’s hand stayed where it was until they’d reached the back door and the small patio outside. They headed toward a section of the fence enclosing the area where there were few other patrons.  
  
A rumbling sound was heard but they ignored it. Duo’s ears were still ringing a little from the noise of the crowd and the music inside.  
  
“Surprised?”  
  
Duo blinked at the question and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “You could say that.”  
  
Heero shoved his hands in his pocket and looked up at the sky where a streak of lightning flashed. “I was, too.”  
  
Another rumble sounded and the people closest to them headed back into the bar.  
  
It should have been incredibly awkward, neither of them saying anything. It was a lot to get his head around, and Duo wasn’t sure exactly what he found most incredible. That Heero Yuy would actually place a personal ad, that he'd word it the way he had, or that said message had caught Duo’s attention.  
  
It wasn’t the first time that circumstances - and maybe fate - had led them to the same place.  
  
A drop of rain fell on his hand and he noticed that there were a few dark spots on Heero’s shirt. Another drop fell, then another, and then it was only the two of them left on the patio.  
  
Heero took the beer from Duo’s grasp and leaned to the side to set it on the table nearest them. Duo’s eyes followed the bottle and returned to Heero, who had taken a step closer.  
  
“It tastes horrible,” Heero said, “and I don’t have any mints with me today.”  
  
Duo didn't need any more encouragement than that. He reached his hand behind Heero’s neck.  
  
And kissed him.

* * *

  
  
Duo climbed the steps on the bus and slid his card into the reader before taking a seat. He picked up a section of a newspaper discarded by a previous passenger and opened it up.  
  
A couple of chattering girls got on at the next stop and sat in the seat across from him. One of them had just broken up with her boyfriend and apparently wanted everyone on the bus to know.  
  
“Why is it,” she wailed, “that the good ones are always taken?”  
  
“Or gay,” her friend consoled.  
  
Duo turned his head toward the window and smiled.  
  
Sometimes they were both.


End file.
